Book review: Billionaires versus democracy

Gil Durán’s important book details the role of an utterly corrupt White House in this surging techno imperialism.

• The Nerd Reich: Silicon Valley Fascism and the War on Democracy
• Gil Durán
• Simon & Schuster, €20

Days before this call-to-arms was published it was reported that Stripe chief executive, Nenagh-born Patrick Collison, donated €6.2m to a campaign trying to block a wealth tax in California.

Collison (37) built online payments giant Stripe with his brother John. They became billionaires — joining the tech broligarchs trying to reshape our world by destroying democracies.

Collison supported a laughably named Building a Better California to try to stymie a law requiring Californian residents worth more than $1bn pay a once-off 5% of their assets to fund healthcare programmes.

You can, if you’re wet behind the ears, believe this represents a valid contribution to the democratic process. 

In truth, it is an example of one of the fewer than 1,000 America-based billionaires — there are almost 3,500 in the world — using their financial and technological cudgels to shape our future in a way that advances their interests over everyone else.

That is the theme of Durán’s extremely important book, one that details the role of an utterly corrupt White House in this surging techno imperialism. 

He describes everything from cryptocurrency backhanders, insider trading so corrupt that it makes a few Charvet shirts seem childish.

He describes how US president Donald Trump suggested building a new, private, for-profit city in Gaza for the tech billionaires, one where freedom means freedom from the normal constraints of a decent society.

The tech bros want to build unfettered citadels right around the world.

Even in this shameful litany, one that must make any responsible American cringe, one episode stands out. 

In 2024 Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras, was convicted in an American court of trying to smuggle 400 tons of cocaine and sentenced to 45 years in jail. 

He was, according to a federal prosecutor, “at the centre of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world”.

He need not have worried. Just a year later Trump pardoned him. His leverage? He had supported a “freedom city” in Honduras where the tech bros could build a do-as-you-like nirvana.

Durán details incomprehensible figures secured by tech companies in the growing defence market — Gaza is a helpful testing ground reports Durán.

This growth is a double-edged sword that facilitates insider trading and strengthens the very entities that, though they purport to defend democracy, are doing all they can to eviscerate it.

Another plank in that campaign is the destruction of heritage media. It is not coincidental or healthy that tech billionaires invest in benchmark media companies to silence their voices.

Like all good books this one leaves a question we ignore at our peril — if it is not too late. What can we do to control those whose wealth and influence make them the dominant force in our world? 

This is especially pressing as AI seems destined to create an unemployment crisis that will be, however long it is possible, paid for by states rather than by the beneficiaries of AI.

Tragically, it is much easier to believe democracies have the heft to confront this threat to our civilisation than it is to hope that that power will be used to protect the interests of the great majority.

As Durán warns convincingly: “You can have billionaires or democracy but not both.” Which do you choose?